The State of Inbound 2017 Highlights

The State of Inbound 2017 was released in May from HubSpot based on the latest data around the future of sales and marketing. 

Here are some statistics from the report which may resonate with you and your current business, sales, and marketing challenges: 

• Only 22% of all respondents say their organization's sales and marketing relationship is tightly aligned.
• 31% of C-level executives say there is tight alignment between their marketing and sales teams, but only 17% of managers and individual contributors agree.
• Respondents with sales and marketing SLAs in their organization are 3x more likely to say their marketing strategy is effective compared to those in misaligned organizations.
• 70% of marketers say their top priority over the next 12 months is converting contacts/leads to customers.
• 63% of marketers say their top challenge is generating traffic and leads.
• 38% of salespeople say getting a response from prospects is more difficult than two to three years ago.
• 35% of salespeople say closing deals is more difficult than two to three years ago.
• 38% of salespeople say they struggle most with prospecting.
• 45% of salespeople say they spend over an hour performing manual data entry, yet only 21% of C-level executives said this is so. 

These takeaways even highlight why aligning marketing and sales planning first and foremost is become more important.

My visit to the 2016 HubSpot Inbound Event in Boston provided validation of the rapidly shifting nature and importance of digital marketing automation. Every marketing plan requires an inbound methodology to respond to the ways in which buyers make purchasing decisions today compared with a more traditional approach.

It was great to meet and hear the HubSpot founders – Dharmesh Shah and Brian Halligan speak about their 10 years and vision moving forward. The key themes I noticed were around developing great content tailored to the audience, encompassing all generations of buyers and consideration of other effective content channels like video.

The reality of the rapid digital transformation shift and web presence truly allows even small businesses to flourish with global clients via online and ecommerce marketing approaches. Even without large sales teams the power of globalisation is clear and represents a significant opportunity for small businesses to leverage this period in time.

Key takeaways and observations:

• Creative competitive advantage and adding value to clients requires broader business acumen and commercial understanding of the clients’ industry and business, as well as appropriate metrics and reporting.

• Changing pricing strategies and services for higher profitability and value-add is the key to survival, and a shift away from traditional marketing, advertising, PR, and digital agencies to deliver more value is what clients want to experience.
• Investment in marketing and marketing automation will generate more sustainable new leads and sustainable organic prospective new client sources, but also improve the quality of content. This is how successful businesses are already generating higher ROI than using traditional marketing methods. 
• When looking at investment in marketing automation software, ensure that integration capabilities are considered with the major players. 

Jamie Strachan – Senior Technology Solutions Architect - provides some an independent review of the HubSpot marketing automation packages: Independent review of marketing automation - Hubspot